The drilling and processing of hydrocarbons, particularly crude oil, is crucial to the maintenance of modern day society. A great deal of oil that is drilled and collected for refining is obtained from the earth beneath oceans and other large bodies of water. However, one of the most troublesome and difficult problems that are encountered in offshore drilling and production is the ever-looming possibility of an oil spill. Whenever this occurs, either through a blow-out or a rupture in an oil transport line, an explosion on an oil rig, or a catastrophe encountered by an oil tanker at sea, the crude oil spills out onto the surface of the water, where currents may carry the oil for thousands of miles and eventually the oil may be washed up upon a beach or other shore line by wave action.
Initially, the spilled oil will float on the surface of the water and may be confined to a relatively small area. However, as time progresses, currents will disperse the oil over a progressively larger area and wave action will intersperse the oil with the water, making clean-up operations even more difficult. Furthermore, when the oil is washed up on a beach or shore, recreational use of the beach may be ruined for a considerable period of time and many species of wildlife may be severely damaged.
Numerous efforts by mankind to devise methods and systems for either preventing or containing oil spills have met with limited success. The quicker the clean-up operation begins, the more effective it will be. It is therefore necessary that oil recovery equipment be transported to the site of the spill and quickly deployed in order to expedite the clean-up operation and minimize the resulting damage.